Jaunsar Bawar’s Vanishing Classrooms:
By Dr Kripa Nautiyal
The tribal hills of Jaunsar Bawar in Dehradun district tell a story of broken promises. Despite being part of India’s sixth richest state, this remote region exemplifies the devastating gap between ambitious education policies and ground-level implementation—a chasm that has transformed vibrant mountain communities into “ghost villages” and forced thousands to abandon their ancestral homes.
While the entire state reels from recent images of an Uttarakhand Education Department officer physically assaulting a woman journalist during an interview—a brutal symbol of the system’s arrogance and impunity—the real violence unfolds silently in mountain classrooms where children’s futures are being systematically dismantled.
The Crisis in Numbers
A government report released on March 10, 2025, by Uttarakhand’s State Rural Development and Migration Commission reveals a shocking reality: out of 17,787 schools statewide, 10,470 schools (59%) have no principal, and around 3,504 schools depend on a single teacher for all subjects and grades. In regions like Jaunsar Bawar, these statistics translate to children walking treacherous mountain paths to reach schools where learning has become a distant dream.
Yet another damning newspaper report asserted that despite claims to bolstering the ailing education system in Uttarakhand, the situation has worsened dramatically. A total of 1,671 schools have been shut down across the state due to lack of students, while student enrolment in 3,573 schools has dwindled to 10 or fewer students. In 102 schools, only one student is enrolled per school—a grotesque testimony to policy failure.
The human cost is staggering. Almost 50 percent of migrants left for lack of employment opportunities, 16 to 17 percent due to non-availability of education or schools, and another 10 to 12 percent due to inadequate health facilities. Between 2001 and 2011, 350,000 people left Uttarakhand, with 1,048 villages completely abandoned. Since 2011, an additional 734 villages have been deserted, creating what locals call “bhootiya gaon”—ghost villages.
The primary school in village Haja of Jaunsar Bawar area saw student numbers plummet from 186 in 2015 to just 89 in 2025. The pattern repeats across hill districts—schools emptying not because of improved alternatives, but because families are fleeing due to poor education resulting from insufficient teachers.
Jaunsar Bawar: A Tribal Area Left Behind
Jaunsar Bawar’s predominantly tribal population, granted Scheduled Tribe status in 1967, faces unique challenges. The region’s geographical isolation makes it particularly vulnerable to educational neglect. The Veer Shaheed Kesari Chand Rajkiya Snatkottar Mahavidyalaya, Dakpathar, established in 1993, serves as one of the few higher education institutions catering to this tribal area, yet primary and secondary education remains critically deficient. As per a newspaper report, in Kalsi block, out of 157 schools, 149 have student strength less than 10. In Chakrata block, the situation is equally dire—out of 183 schools, 45 have fewer than 10 students and 15 have fewer than 5 students. The State Government does not seem interested in exploring ways and means to increase student numbers.
Field research reveals that schools in Jaunsar Bawar operate with far fewer teachers than authorized. Infrastructure funds disappear or remain unutilized — toilets sanctioned but never built, boundary walls that mysteriously “blow away in heavy winds”. During the 75th Independence Day celebrations in August 2022, numerous teachers failed to reach their schools, unwilling to make the arduous 100-kilometre journey from Dehradun that takes over three hours through winding mountain roads.
The Uttarakhand Human Development Report 2018 exposes the educational deficit: only 56.6% of the population aged 15 and above has received education through secondary level. More alarmingly, 15.3% remain illiterate, while 28% completed only primary education. The gender literacy gap compounds the crisis—14.81% statewide, but nearly double in hill districts. Uttarkashi records a 25.28% gender gap and 18.53% illiteracy rate, challenges mirrored in Jaunsar Bawar.
The Teacher Crisis: When Promotion Becomes Punishment
The teacher shortage stems from systemic dysfunction. Some teachers have forfeited promotions to avoid postings in hill areas like Jaunsar Bawar, preferring to remain in plains districts where 60-66% of children attend private schools. This perverse incentive structure reveals the deterrent effect of difficult hill postings.
Meanwhile, in Pithoragarh, 21 schools shut down in 2023-24 due to “fewer children” and “mass migration from villages”, while in Dehradun district (encompassing Jaunsar Bawar), 24 schools closed after zero student enrolment. The irony is bitter—not enough teachers for existing schools, yet schools closing for lack of students because families have abandoned hope.
Children in remote areas walk several kilometres to reach schools, often facing threats from wild animals. One woman from Pauri’s Boundil village described confronting leopards while escorting her daughter on the 6-7 kilometre treacherous walk to school. When education requires such daily courage, abandoning it becomes understandable. In fact, in September 2025, during my visit to Jaunsar Bawar, I met about 12 girls and two boys who were walking 12 kilometres daily from their villages to government higher secondary school in Dasou village for their education.
Private Schools: A Vote of No Confidence
Uttarakhand displays a troubling trend counter to national patterns. While government school enrolment across India increased from 64.3% in 2018 to 70.3% in 2021, Uttarakhand witnessed a 3.3 percentage point shift toward private schools. By 2021, only 50.5% of children aged 6-14 attended government schools—among India’s lowest rates.
This preference, driven by perceptions of quality teaching and better infrastructure, becomes cruelly ironic in Jaunsar Bawar where private schools are scarce. Families face two choices: send children to poorly managed government schools or migrate. Increasingly, they choose migration.
COVID-19: Deepening the Digital Divide
The pandemic exposed existing inequalities. Schools closed for over a year, yet barely one-third (35.6%) of enrolled children received learning materials from schools in 2020. By 2021, only 63.7% of government school students had smartphone access at home, and among those households, only 27% of children could actually use them.
For Jaunsar Bawar’s children, where connectivity remains patchy and poverty rates higher, the digital divide became an educational abyss. Families took loans to survive, making smartphone purchases impossible. Children from less-educated families received minimal learning support at home, creating a widening gap that did irreparable damage.
Policy Promises, Ground Realities
The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 promises universal education with 100% gross enrolment ratio by 2030, raising higher education enrolment from 26.3% to 50% by 2035, and increasing public investment from 4.6% to 6% of GDP. Yet these ambitions seem fantastical in Jaunsar Bawar’s reality.
The awareness deficit is profound. Despite policies offering free education for girls through Class XII, only 26% of households statewide know about this benefit. Similarly, only 7% of households are aware of the Uttarakhand Skill Development Mission 2013, which could enhance employability.
The supervision vacuum has created impunity. With 59% of schools lacking principals, there’s no administrative oversight. The recent assault on a journalist by an education officer is merely the visible face of a system that operates without accountability. Research indicates that 60% of candidates aspiring for jobs are screened out for lack of communication skills, 25% for analytical skills, and 5% for domain knowledge—meaning 90% of educated youth lack essential employability skills.
Implementable Solutions
Addressing this crisis requires bold action:
Short Service Entry for Teachers: Create ten-year contracts for young teachers with performance-based extensions. Provide accommodation near schools, offer 30-50% salary premiums for remote postings, and make hill service mandatory for promotion. Conversely, treat promotion forfeiture to avoid hill postings as grounds for termination.
Mobile Monitoring Teams: Establish district-level teams conducting surprise inspections of 5-8 schools daily, verifying teacher attendance, assessing student knowledge, and ensuring infrastructure funds reach intended purposes. Publish findings monthly with consequences for lapses.
Technology-Enabled Learning: Deploy e-learning infrastructure with offline capabilities, provide subsidized devices to disadvantaged students, and create recorded lessons by master teachers accessible with intermittent connectivity.
Skill Development Integration: Transform secondary schools into vocational training hubs offering courses in tourism, construction, healthcare, IT, organic farming, and handicrafts, with industry partnerships ensuring placement.
Infrastructure Accountability: Implement blockchain tracking of funds from sanction to utilization, mandate geo-tagged photographs of completed work, and prosecute officials involved in misappropriation with fast-tracked trials.
Special Tribal Focus: Recognize Jaunsar Bawar’s unique character with culturally sensitive curricula, tribal language instruction in early grades, targeted scholarships, and reserved teaching positions for local tribal youth who can serve as role models.
Conclusion: An Existential Choice
The massive out-migration has created ghost villages, intensifying vulnerability to border trespass. For Jaunsar Bawar and Uttarakhand’s hill districts, quality education isn’t merely a policy objective—it’s an existential imperative.
The state government may announce projects to upgrade schools in Uttarakhand. Yet money alone won’t solve the crisis. What’s required is fundamental reimagining: treating rural hill education as emergency intervention, demanding accountability from teachers and bureaucrats, leveraging technology while recognizing infrastructure limitations, and demonstrating to hill communities that the state hasn’t abandoned them.
The children of Jaunsar Bawar deserve the same education as their peers in Dehradun’s private schools. Until that becomes reality, Uttarakhand’s prosperity claims will ring hollow—riches concentrated in plains while hills haemorrhage their futures. For children trudging to schools with absent teachers and abandoned infrastructure, the choice facing policymakers determines whether their futures lie in ancestral villages or distant cities to which economic desperation drives them. The mountains are calling—will anyone answer before they fall silent forever?
(The author has undertaken field study in Jaunsar Bawar area for his doctoral thesis. He is a Defence and Strategic Studies expert turned Anthropologist. He has authored a number of articles in various journals and newspapers.)
